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Michelle Obama's second term

Analyzing Obama's second term

For this first lady, the second term is YOLO territory.

Over the past few weeks alone, she’s scolded a heckler, started posting personal shots to Instagram and taken her daughters to lunch with U2 frontman Bono at an Irish pub. She’s posting decades-old personal photos from early in her relationship with the president, as she did Thursday. And in her public appearances since January’s Inauguration, she’s repeatedly waded into political and partisan waters she’s long taken pains to avoid.

“I do think you see her being a little bit freer,” said Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to Hillary Clinton with ties to the first lady’s office. “It’s human nature for her to feel more relaxed, more comfortable in her own skin, a little bit more unguarded” after more than four years in the White House.

The newfound sense of freedom is obvious. More often now, the first lady appears at ease — genuinely enjoying a public role that seems to allow for far more of those unguarded moments than it did the first time around.

After a decade and a half in politics, she knows her family’s fortunes will never again be reliant on the views of voters — and it shows.

The new freedom is also reflected in her schedule as daughters Malia and Sasha — the focus of much of the first lady’s early life in the White House — have grown older. But the personal demands on her schedule haven’t been replaced by a new policy focus. She hasn’t yet rolled out a splashy new initiative or mapped out ambitious plans to travel the globe.

Instead, she’s taking a little time to enjoy the unique experiences that come with her position. The switch began just weeks after the Inauguration in January, when she announced the Academy Awards for Best Picture by live video from the White House with members of the military standing behind her.

Obama had flirted with a similar approach in 2009, as she posed for the covers of Vogue and O, The Oprah Magazine and jetted off to Spain on a trip with friends that grabbed headlines over a reported half-million-dollar price tag, giving critics ammunition to accuse her of being out of touch with the problems of ordinary Americans, as the economy continued to struggle.

Back then, it soon became clear that Obama needed to focus on — and be identified with — a noncontroversial policy initiative. Within the next two years, she launched Let’s Move! to combat childhood obesity, and Joining Forces, devoted to helping military families.

The first lady’s team is reluctant to speak on the record about her second-term role, which still includes both initiatives, along with other child-focused efforts. That reluctance is likely to continue as Communications Director Kristina Schake departs, replaced by Estée Lauder executive Maria Cristina González Noguera.

Reflecting on her time in the White House during a joint interview last week with former first lady Laura Bush conducted by Cokie Roberts in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Obama described her immersion in these popular programs as a sort of escape.

“You have an opportunity to speak to your passions and to really design and be very strategic about the issues you care most about. And I just found it just a very freeing and liberating opportunity,” Obama said.

Responding to a question from Roberts about whether living in the White House ever feels like being imprisoned, she joked that “there are prison elements to it. But it’s a really nice prison.”

If the White House is a prison to Obama, she’s made a couple of notable jail breaks this year.

Despite a well-established distaste for both the campaign trail and the duties that come with being a political spouse, over the past few months, she’s been diving into off-year election events and party fundraisers with more enthusiasm and frequency than ever.

“Second terms are liberating because there’s no more campaigning for yourself,” said Anita McBride, who spent eight years as Laura Bush’s White House chief of staff. “But there is a responsibility to the party and the president’s legacy.”

“You’re seeing an effort on her part to support the party, support the candidates, support what President Obama is doing — cement the platform for their party.”

Obama didn’t make a conscious choice to get more politically engaged, people close to her argue. Rather, they say, circumstances — the killing of Hadiya Pendleton, the need to win a Democratic majority in the House in 2014 — have drawn her into the conversation.

No matter the motivation, the level of off-year political involvement is — for Michelle Obama — almost unprecedented. Over the course of just 10 days in late May and early June, the first lady appeared at seven fundraisers — most for the Democratic National Committee, including one at fashion designer Tory Burch’s apartment in The Pierre hotel in New York.

The crowded schedule was more a function of her travel plans for the rest of June than of an aggressive shift to nonstop fundraising, people close to the planning said — but it nonetheless highlighted her decision to step up the degree of political engagement.

So far this year, she’s well outpacing previous levels of involvement in races in which her family has no personal stake. She’s fundraised in Massachusetts for Sen.-elect Ed Markey, and in Virginia for gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.